Quotes on Defiance

There is no week, nor day, nor hour, when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves, and lose their roughness and spirit of defiance. Tyranny may always enter—there is no charm or bar against it.

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.

Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.

Since nature does not endow all men with equal beauty or equal intelligence, and the faculty of volition leads men to make different choices, the egalitarians propose to abolish the "unfairness" of nature and of volition, and to establish universal equality in fact - in defiance of facts. It is not equality before the law that they seek, but inequality: the establishment of an inverted social pyramid, with a new aristocracy on top - the aristocracy of non-value.

It was during the Reagan years that defiance of international law and the U.N. Charter became entirely open.

To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.

What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against mans fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men.

Women have to be extremely careful about choosing something that they consider an act of defiance that can really be used to further their enslavement.

Til shade is gone, til water is gone Into the shadow with teeth bared Screaming defiance with the last breath To spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.

Anarchism...stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral.

I intend to bring you strength, joy, courage, perspicacity, defiance.

I consider it…as subverting the fundamental and characteristic principle of the Government…and as bidding defiance to the sense in which the Constitution is known to have been proposed, advocated, and adopted. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one.

Serious art has been the work of individual artists whose art has had nothing to do with 'style' because they were not in the least connected with the style or the needs of the masses. Their works arose rather in defiance of their times.

There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedience's taking the law into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.

Creativity is an act of defiance.

A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance . . . like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care about anything but himself and his dying.

Being defiant can be a good thing sometimes," Aunty Ifeoma said. "Defiance is like marijuana - it is not a bad thing when it is used right.

The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: September 11th we are all Americans - in grief, as in defiance.

I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: Today, we are all Americans. In grief, as in defiance.

My personal aesthetic is to be affected directly by everything about what you're seeing... I don't mind being dashed on the rocks... My most base act of defiance is to live a long time and still rock.